Overview and CQC Inspections

OverallGood

Our inspector's description of this service

Last updated 7 September 2016
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

This inspection took place on 21 June 2016 and was unannounced.

The inspection was undertaken by an inspector and an expert by experience. An expert by experience is a person who has personal experience of using services or caring for someone who requires this type of service.

Before the inspection, the provider completed a Provider Information Return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.

Before the inspection we reviewed other information that we held about the service such as notifications, which are events which happened in the service that the provider is required to tell us about, and information that had been sent to us by other agencies.

We also spoke with the local authority who commissioned services from the provider in order to obtain their view on the quality of care provided by the service. We spoke to health and social care professionals during the site visit.

During our inspection, we spoke with seven people who lived at the service, six relatives, three members of the care staff, two members of the domestic and laundry staff, an activities organiser, two cooks, the deputy manager, the registered manager and the owner. We also observed how care and support was provided to people.

We looked at five people’s care plan records and other records related to the running of and the quality of the service. Records included maintenance records, staff files, minutes of meetings and audit reports the registered manager had completed about the services provided.

Inspection ratings

We rate most services according to how safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led they are, using four levels:

Outstanding – the service is performing exceptionally well.

Good – the service is performing well and meeting our expectations.

Requires improvement – the service isn't performing as well as it should and we have told the service how it must improve.

Inadequate – the service is performing badly and we've taken enforcement action against the provider of the service.

No rating/under appeal/rating suspended – there are some services which we can’t rate, while some might be under appeal from the provider. Suspended ratings are being reviewed by us and will be published soon.

Ticks and crosses

We don't rate every type of service. For services we haven't rated we use ticks and crosses to show whether we've asked them to take further action or taken enforcement action against them.

There's no need for the service to take further action. If this service has not had a CQC inspection since it registered with us, our judgement may be based on our assessment of declarations and evidence supplied by the service.

The service must make improvements.

At least one standard in this area was not being met when we inspected the service and we have taken enforcement action.